Polish-born biochemist Joanna Wysocka first visited the U.S. as a representative of Poland at the 1992 International Chemistry Olympiad, but it was only later that she immigrated to earn her Ph.D. at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Long Island. After her post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University, where her research focused on chromatin biology, Wysocka established an independent laboratory in the Departments of Chemical and Systems Biology and Developmental Biology at Stanford University. There she shifted her focus to stem cell biology, and, in 2010, she won the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Honored with a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, in 2013, Wysocka continues to build on her work, uncovering crucial insights into cell fate and lineage.